Sean, 59, from New Zealand, joined the Human Library in 2022. He was first published at a local event in Whangarei. A friend of his organized the event and called him up to hear if he would be interested in becoming a Book, and it did not take much persuasion for him to sign up, “I thought that sounds really cool, and I loved the ‘Unjudge Someone’ approach”. He was published with the topic ADHD and has since joined our online bookshelf as well.

Discovering ADHD

Sean’s journey to discovering his ADHD began with a surprising twist. While he has had ADHD all his life, it remained hidden, even from himself.

“I was actually in denial when it first came up. I was seeing a therapist, and he said, well, maybe there’s a bit of neurodivergence happening here. And I was quite indignant and said: ‘I’m not autistic and I can’t have ADHD because I know where my keys are!’, which is really funny because a little while later, I actually lost my keys for two days and didn’t even notice. He was right though, because all of the problems I was working on with him were actually due to my undiagnosed neurodivergence.”

After a relationship breakup, Sean became quite anxious, so started medication for the anxiety. After a short while, the medication removed the anxiety, but several other things started to happen to him. “All of a sudden, I couldn’t remember anything. It would take me three attempts to send an email, and I was really disorganised, which was very unusual for me. So, I started down this process of understanding what this neurodivergence thing was about and went through a big process of diagnosis. It turns out suppressed anxiety was my main masking method.”

At 58 years old, Sean was diagnosed with ADHD.

Coming to Terms with ADHD

When Sean was first diagnosed with ADHD, he found it hard to digest and struggled to process it. “When I first found out, it was quite a shock to the system. There’s a lot of relief that you finally know what’s going on, but also so much grief for what could have been different. After getting support and understanding, the world started making more sense”.

Sean with his double bass.

He found that medication, therapy and coaching made the difference for him, “Medication is not a magic pill that makes you normal. I’m not normal. But it gives me access to capability. Things that I realise have been hard for me to do all my life are now possible”. Self-care is crucial after a late diagnosis, and he adds, “I’ve also recently started playing double bass in an orchestra. Music is amazing for my brain”. When asked if he still feels like the same Sean from before the medication, he replies, “Yes and no. I am the same Sean. I have the same history. But looking back and understanding how I thought and felt about things, I feel very different now. Who I am is fundamentally the same, but my emotional response is very different.”

Sean also mentions how fortunate he felt after disclosing the diagnosis to his workplace and how supported he felt. “I went to my boss and said, hey, I’ve just had this diagnosis, there are some things happening for me. And his response was to ask what I need and how he can help.” He acknowledges that not everyone has the same experience as him and says about his employer, “It’s really amazing that they are willing to look after their employees.”

“Our job as humans is to be the best human being we can be with whatever we’ve got. Whatever brain you’ve got, whatever circumstance you are in, you turn up as your best person and try to be the best you can be. Managing my ADHD is just part of who I am.”

Challenging Misconceptions

ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. But for Sean, it’s not a deficit of attention at all, but quite the opposite, “It’s all the attention all the time!”  He also describes the common misconception that hyperactivity doesn’t always show up the same way, “It isn’t all bouncy five-year-old boys”, but it can also be internal hyperactivity, like overthinking.

“People do ask, doesn’t everybody have this? And yes, being distracted, intense or very emotional is fairly common. The difference is that for many neurodivergent people, they are much more extreme. For both neurotypical and neurodivergent people, if something upsetting happens, both will get upset and then calm down again. The neurodivergent person will often get way more upset and take much longer to get back to a normal state of regulation. It’s much harder.”

Being a Part of the Human Library

When the conversation turned to being a part of the Human Library, Sean talked about one of his most memorable readings. “This guy turned up and checked me out as a Book. He told me: ‘I’ve got a young son, he’s so bouncy and uncontrollable. He’s so busy and so hyperactive. I don’t know what to do, and maybe he has ADHD’. I said, ‘I can’t diagnose your son, but here are some places you can go and talk to’. There was a pause, and he then talked about himself, that there are all these things that he knows he should do, but he just can’t do them, and that he feels on his own and can’t talk to his wife about it, and his parents think he’s ridiculous. I knew exactly what he was feeling and just wanted to give him a big hug. It was an incredibly moving moment.”

For those seeking to understand ADHD, Sean advocates visiting the Human Library and engaging with the real experiences of other people. “I think everyone should come along to the Human Library and read some Books and get a perspective from people who are different. It’s just that connection. You sit and talk to a group of people from all sorts of cultures all over the world, with different experiences, and come away with a better understanding. It’s amazing.”

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Read the previous Book of the Month: Disabled and Gay.

The post Book of the Month: ADHD appeared first on The Human Library Organization.

Linda from Copenhagen, Denmark, has one of the more unique titles on the Human Library bookshelf; Psychic healer. In 2018, she came across a Facebook post about The Human Library Organization, which sparked a desire to join once she had the time and mental capacity. Linda has now been a part of the Copenhagen book depot since June 2022.

Never Alone

Since childhood, Linda has lived with a sense of people being around her; “When I would ask them something, I got an answer. It was not just a feeling of yes or no. It was long and complicated sentences. Answers that I couldn’t have thought of, unpredictable answers. I have always felt that they were on my side.”

A Sixth Sense

Linda’s abilities are called Extra Sensory Perception, shortened as ESP, or popularly called a sixth sense. “It’s when your senses exceed the physical ones. We all live with the five senses that we know, but with extra sensory, I can see memories that are not my own, for example.”, Linda explains. “If you asked me about something from your childhood, I can close my eyes, tune in, and see the situation you’re talking about. A situation you’ve never told me about that no one could know without having been there.”

Bullied by her Bosses

Linda’s readers have the opportunity to learn about her abilities and her job as a healer, but for Linda, it is equally important to touch upon what it has been like to live as an outsider. “Because I’m a psychic, I have been bullied to the point of having to see a therapist. I’ve had to leave four different jobs because my co-workers were bullying me. At two of those places the boss was also part of the bullying.”

“Since I was a teenager, I’ve talked about clairvoyance and being psychic, and I have met a lot of resistance. It definitely has not been fun, and there have been times where I’ve thought, ‘Maybe I should just shut up about it’.” Linda says when asked about her reasons for wanting to become an open Book. 

“I’ve also had to deal with depression regularly because I have felt like there was no room for me in society. So it was actually a way to fight back.”

Challenging the Stigmas and Stereotypes

The fight Linda talks about is not only about her own experiences but also those of her colleagues within the alternative treatment community and their clients: “There is this stigma about psychics, which is what I represent, and other alternative treatment providers, that we’re crazy, that we’re naive, and we’ll believe anything. There are so many prejudices about what we are and who the people that come to see us are.”

Lockdown Changed Attitudes

But this attitude has recently started to change; Linda herself believes that the lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic have led many more to research alternative medicine, healing and clairvoyance while in self-isolation.

“I think many people have been watching Netflix and YouTube at home on the couch and come across alternative documentaries, of which there are some amazing ones, and started thinking, ‘maybe there is something to it’,” Linda says. “Now, when I tell people that I’m psychic, people say, ‘Wow, that’s exciting; tell me more’. It used to be, ‘Oh, so you’re someone I’m allowed to bully’.”

“It’s a completely new society that I’ve returned to.” She laughs. “It used to be a discussion about whether clairvoyance is real. Now, it’s more of a dialogue about how it is possible, whether I’ve always had these experiences, and how it feels. They are curious about what is going on within the psychic. I really like talking about that.”

Read Linda in Copenhagen

One way to get the opportunity to read Linda is if you drop by the Human Library Reading Garden in Copenhagen. We are open to the public every Sunday from noon to 4 pm, and as always, the services of the Human Library are free to our readers.

Want to know more about our Books? Read about our last Book of the Month, Paris.

The post Book of the Month: Psychic Healer appeared first on The Human Library Organization.

Our Human Library Book of the Month is a series of portraits of our books created with the purpose of offering our readers a chance to understand the diversity and variety within our bookshelves around the world. It also provides unique insights into the motivations and values of being a book and volunteering for our organization.

The care system might not be an easy thing to talk about, but Paris almost makes it look like it is. She is such a great speaker – with warmth in her voice, a charming London accent, and obvious experience as a public speaker. Paris’ story, on the surface, is about the care system: how she got into it, what her experience was like, and how it is affecting her to this day. Mostly, however, her story is about making a life for herself despite all that happened and how to get something positive out of what she has experienced in the system. She accomplishes this through her job as a motivational speaker, but also through being a book at the Human Library.

The Care System

Paris went into the foster system when she was six years old. “I was at school, and my teacher at the time said that she wanted to speak to me after school and that some people wanted to meet me. These were people from an organization called NSPCC, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. They explained that I was not going to go back home and that I needed to come with them.”

Paris was first taken to a hospital: “I was going to school in the middle of summer with long trousers, cardigans on and thick roller necks. The teachers knew that something was not quite right. But they were not sure, so the NSPCC, when they saw me, immediately realized that I was covered in bruises, cuts, burn marks, all sorts of horrible scars, things that had healed over time. They were concerned that there might be some internal damage.”

After two weeks, Paris was released from the hospital and went to an assessment centre. As the youngest child in the centre by far, she was treated well, but the carers lacked knowledge about raising a black child: “They did not have much clue about a black child with afro hair and black skin, so one of my earlier memories is them trying to wash my hair in the kitchen over a bowl of some sort and my hair was just all tangled. They couldn’t brush it and did not know what to do with it, so they just shaved it all off. I was teased and bullied, and that was really hard because I was so young and already so confused and upset about being in care.”

Unfortunately, her bad experiences did not end there. As her mother got sentenced to prison for four years, she went into the care system. She joined her first foster family just before she turned eight years old but soon left the family as she was bullied by one of the other children there. What followed was a slew of breakdowns of families and back and forths of different homes until she finally left the care system and got her own flat right before her 18th birthday. She knew what she wanted to do with her life then: “I was fed up and hurt by so many breakdowns in families, and angry at the world for not having a mom and dad that loved me, but at the same time, I loved school and learning. I had my sights on making my adult life as successful and happy as I could make it, and I was really determined that I would achieve as much as I could in my life.”

Life After the Care System

A question she gets asked a lot is how she has managed to overcome her difficult past. “Some of the knockbacks that I got have made me stronger and even more determined,” she explains.

“I realized in my early 20s that being angry at the world and at my past was not really going to get me anywhere, so wasn’t there a way that I could turn something so negative into something a little more positive? I started focusing on learning and giving back, doing voluntary work and helping people that were less fortunate than me.”

Besides doing voluntary work, Paris also started to make a living from motivational speaking and being a trainer. “I originally started off as a school speaker through a website, so I was speaking at schools and colleges initially. And once that grew a bit more, I became self- employed, and I left my job as a secondary school teacher and a trainer. It’s great, I absolutely love it.”

Finding the Human Library

Her experience in motivational speaking and her passion for equality are what attracted her to the Human Library. She found the website through a friend who is a Book at the Library and was immediately interested: “I was really blown away by what I read, it was a perfect fit for me.”

She applied to be a book mainly to address judgements people have towards those who have been in care. “People instantly discriminate, and unfortunately, some of that discrimination is based on statistical facts: most people that grow up in that care system do end up with very poor outcomes. They end up in prison and/or with mental health problems. I wanted to be a book so I could dispel the myth that that is what all people in care are like, that we’re all damaged goods, and we are someone to stay away from. I wanted people to have the opportunity to see another side and a different outcome,” she explains.

“If there is one thing that I want people to take away from my story, it is that I am positive and happy to be me, and I wouldn’t change anything about my past.”

Dispelling Myths and Challenging Judgements 

Paris with Readers

Fortunately, her experience at the Human Library so far has allowed her to achieve this. From the questions she gets, she senses that discrimination usually comes from ignorance rather than deliberate judgment.

“The Human Library is really important for breaking down barriers, for dispelling myths, for really getting people to unjudge. The caption ‘Unjudge Someone’ is brilliant, and I like it because there is an awareness that we all judge and that judging is an important part of human life. The Human Library gives people the opportunity to really challenge their unconscious biases and question some of the thoughts and stereotypes around all sorts of issues, and meet people they wouldn’t normally meet. Humans gravitate towoards those they feel are similar to themselves, and so they don’t meet a young black female who has been in care and also just happens to not be straight. They don’t have the opportunity, so it’s nice to share that and be part of allowing people to explore our diversity.”

The Human Library gives Paris an opportunity to talk about the care system, but especially her specific story and about “race, colour, sexuality, gender and all of those identity issues that people need to hear about from the people that are experiencing them.”

The Human Library Family

The Human Library also helps her further create more positivity and healing. “I find it’s quite therapeutic to talk about my past because it’s a difficult past. Talking about it isn’t painful because, as a motivational speaker, I talk about it a lot – but it’s therapeutic, it’s still healing.”

As she has done both online and face-to-face readings, she has also found the benefits in both. The virtual readings have given her an opportunity to meet readers from all over the world, while the face-to-face readings have given her a sense of community with the other books. “The books are all so lovely and so diverse. I find it quite exciting to be in a room with someone who describes themselves as a Satanist. I’ve met people in the Human Library that I know I wouldn’t have met in real life. Everyone is just so supportive and caring, we really do look out for one another. The Human Library family is definitely like a family, and to someone like me who has grown up as I did, that’s really important.”

Want to know more about our Books? Read about our last Books of the month, Andy and Bernadette.

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From Paris to Amsterdam to Borrow an Open Book

Orestis Christoforides reading an Open Book at Café Amstel Hoeck

With support from our friends at Heineken, the Human Library Book Cafe was open daily to readers at Café Amstel Hoeck. Three days in a row our Readers could borrow a Book while enjoying local drinks and dutch snacks. As always the services of the Human Library are free and so we registered more than 120 loans to readers. We were joined by Readers from Argentina, Belgium, Denmark, France, Hungary, Netherlands, Switzerland, USA, and Uruguay. One reader traveled from Paris in order to experience the Human Library:

“I traveled to Amsterdam specifically for the Human Library event as there were no events planned in France for the time being. I have been aware of the Human Library for some time after reading about it in the news. Being able to meet people who have such unique identities or are easily labeled or discriminated against seemed like a unique opportunity“, said Orestis Christoforides, who took a day off from work to become our reader. 

All Access to our Bookshelf

Our Book and their Reader at the Amstel Hoeck Café

In Amsterdam, our readers had a free choice of topics from our bookshelf and it was common that readers would borrow more than one book during their visit.“Time flew and I ended up staying for 5 hours and reading 5 different books”, said Orestis Christoforides about his experience. 

Among the topics, readers could choose from were Bisexual, Holocaust Survivor, Self Harm, Bipolar, Victim of Abuse, Victim of Stalking, Muslim, Transgender, and Body Modified to name but a few and as always our Librarians encouraged our Readers to be brave and curious when asking their questions: “Reading a human book is a fantastic experience. We are encouraged to ask very direct questions, so the conversations were incredibly open and comfortable. What pushed you to see a therapist? Have you done time? Do you have any prejudices of your own?”, says Orestis Christoforides. 

Here is what some of our Readers had to say:

There is also room for smiles in serious conversations

“It was really awesome to hear someone else’s experience that is so different from my own, and I felt super comfortable asking questions, which was lovely! Thank you!!”

“I think I’m just amazed at how much courage and openness it takes to tell strangers your stories and I’m grateful that the Human Library exists.”

“My conversation with a transgender person was a beautiful philosophical exploration with many great insights: like there is no truth, don’t make assumptions on how people behave.”

“There was a lot more going on behind the title. The books exposed their own human limitations and weaknesses very honestly, which is what I ended up relating to. I can say I returned from my short journey with the impression of having made friends and  feeling more capable at “unjudging” others, even people which I disagree with (or even dislike!)”

A thank you to our partners from Heineken for making it possible for us to contribute to the Amsterdam Pride Week program.

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